I move amendment No. 131:
In page 85, before section 48, but in Chapter I, to insert the following new section:
"48.— The provisions of section 92 of the Finance Act, 1989 and the Disabled Drivers (Tax Concessions) Regulations, 1989 (S.I. No. 340 of 1989) shall be extended to that category of disabled persons who are without one hand or without one arm.".
This issue was something of a chestnut between Deputy Yates and the former Finance Minister, now the Taoiseach, Deputy Reynolds, some years ago when some concession was given as a result of points Deputy Yates made at that time. I had forgotten about it until recently when a constituent with one arm came to my clinic and raised the question of her disability and the regulation. That excited my curiosity and I looked into the matter. Statutory Instrument No. 340 of 1989 deals with this matter of the disabled drivers tax concessions. The core question is, who is disabled and what constitutes disability? The issue, for anyone who suffers such a disability, is a very serious one.
When I read the regulation my first reaction was to laugh out loud at the way it parsed and analysed disability. Disabled persons, from the point of view of the regulation which would operate a refund in respect of vehicles driven by disabled persons are:
(a) persons who are wholly or almost wholly without the use of both legs;
(b) persons wholly without the use of one of their legs and almost wholly without the use of the other leg such that they are severely restricted as to movement of their lower limbs;
(c) persons without both hands or without both arms;
(d) persons without one or both legs;
(e) persons having the medical condition of dwarfism and who have serious dificulties of movement of the lower limbs.
If one or both of one's legs are missing or crippled one qualifies. If both of one's hands or arms are missing one qualifies. But, if one of one's arms or hands is missing one does not qualify. I do not know what logic lies behind this but as I go through it I ask myself the question which must always come up on the revenue side, what is the likely cost? I do not know the answer. I do not know how many people who suffer the disability of missing one hand or one arm might feel they are entitled to be included in this list. But, given the way the tax system operates, this is not a situation in which a person can go to a tax consultant and invite a bit of avoidance engineering to be done on his or her behalf.
It is inconceivable that in order to avoid the tax we would convert ourselves into some kind of Islamic Republic and remove our hands or our arms in order to qualify for the tax. I can only suppose the people who would want to avail of this would be people who, in a bona fide way, either through a birth defect or through some accident, had lost an arm or a hand and who suffered a disability in consequence.
The condition has to be limited in its extent. Obviously, since people have accidents or may be born with birth defects, the population affected will vary over time, but it must be a very limited population. I do not understand the logic of the parsimonious parsing that went into the drafting of the regulation. This amendment seeks to extend Statutory Instrument No. 340 of 1989 to that category of disabled persons who are without one hand or one arm. It would take account of the person who visited my clinic, which was the cause of my curiosity in this. Given that it is not the kind of area where people are going to set out deliberately to avoid tax by incurring such profound disability I do not understand the parsimony involved in the definition as employed in 1989.